Warners, who via Seymour Stein and Sire, had The Smiths licence for the States, were best placed to realise the long-term value of The Smiths and put in a serious bid for their rights. Although the Rough Trade label’s catalogue was seriously diminished without The Smiths, in a moment of great dignity, Travis added the rest of the Rough Trade masters to the asset pile, many of which were later auctioned off by KPMG. In the case of a handful of Rough Trade artists, notably Galaxie 500, the tapes were bought back by the bands themselves. ‘When it all went wrong Geoff was big enough to stand up and say, “I’ll take it on the chin,”’ says Mills, ‘and he threw Rough Trade Records into the pot, which he didn’t have to do. He’d absented himself quite substantially from the runnings of the distribution operation by then.’
Mute, Beggars and a handful of the other minor creditors then set about establishing a new distribution company, one which would replace Rough Trade on a much smaller, more streamlined scale. With a percentage of the revenue from the distribution fees, they would begin the long process of compensation for their Rough Trade debts. ‘What happened was, we got as many of the best people as we could from Rough Trade,’ says Miller, ‘and started a new company, called RTM. I still believe in the independent sector, that’s where the best stuff comes from, and you’ve got to have a way of servicing that sector as much as you can.’
The ignominy of its ending was an unsatisfying legacy for Rough Trade. In all its different configurations, however naive or successful, it had offered an open door through which people were encouraged to walk and join the experiment. What had started as an idealistic project had ended in the cold market realities of administration, insolvency and a visit from the auditors; it had also left many of the micro-organisations, bands, labels and projects it had unconditionally supported high and dry.
At the start of a new decade, over fifteen years after it had opened as a shop, there were plenty of people in both the majors and independents who saw Rough Trade’s closure as a definitive end to an era and to the experiment. ‘The collapse of Rough Trade felt like some form of rite of passage,’ says John Dyer. ‘You would never get a band to trust to sign to you unless you got paid. I remember Tony Wilson saying one day that the only people who’d ever ripped him off were indie distributors around the world. “So don’t just say that indies are good and majors are bad,” and I repeat that riff to this day; he said, “there are great people at major labels and there are wankers at indies,” and that’s true, it’s completely true.’
It would be some years before Travis resurfaced as a force in the music industry. Only a few of his contemporaries in Collier Street, and even fewer from Kensington Park Road, would stay the course with him. It is a mark of his passion for music and discovering new ideas – the sine qua non of a truly great A&R person – that he survived the brow-beating and blame-chasing of the collapse of Rough Trade to emerge once more as a highly revered maverick.
‘When it closed, it was a horrible day which I still remember,’ says Robin Hurley. ‘Geoff was in New York to see Dinosaur Jr on the day we found out the UK company was insolvent. We were limping along anyway. In the US there’s a law that says if your parent company is insolvent, then you have to cease to trade, so we had to shut up shop and everyone was let go.’
The next few years were not easy for Travis who, although determined to carry on, would have to regroup in a new set of conditions and in a music environment where the laissez-faire, artist-led ethos of Rough Trade was no longer tenable. ‘It was a horrible dark, dark, time,’ he says. ‘A really dark time and I think I almost had a nervous breakdown.’
Richard Scott, his former partner, conspirator, adversary, idealist and dreamer in the Rough Trade project made one last visit to the company as its winding-up notices were being processed and a skeleton caretaker staff was supervising the final closure. ‘When Rough Trade went belly up, I drove up to the Seven Sisters building, and parked my car in the warehouse. I got out and said, “I’ve come to take the speakers,” and nobody knew who I was. They were the same speakers, a pair of studio monitors. They’d come from the back room at Kensington Park Road. They were the ones that had driven the first sound system in the shop. I just put them into my car and drove off.’
* Such was the lack of interest in World of Echo, that Cerne Canning, who was on the Rough Trade staff at the time, remembers the record being used as a frisbee in the Rough Trade warehouse.
PART THREE
You Are the Latest Contender,
You Are the One to Remember
16 Turnaround
Dave Barker takes a walk on the Lower East Side, New York, 1990 (David E. Barker archive)
One of the smaller labels that suffered from the disintegration of Rough Trade was Fire Records, a guitar label with a strong release schedule, to which Dave Barker, who was now working there as A&R, had brought Spacemen 3 and the Pastels. ‘There was a drawing on the wall in the Fire office,’ says Barker, ‘saying “Everything’ll be all right, when the Spacemen album comes out”. It took so long coming out that Recurring was a brilliant title for the album.’
Barker had been busy establishing contacts in the American underground and had been given his own imprint, Paperhouse, by Fire’s owner, Clive Solomon. Paperhouse releases were often stylish or esoteric (or both) and included a series of wigged-out records by Half Japanese, many of which had been produced by one of the underground’s busiest men, Kramer, and featured a friend of Sonic Youth, Don Fleming, multitasking on guitar, bass or keyboards. ‘I became pals with Don Fleming because B.A.L.L., Kramer’s band, came over to the UK and were booked by Russell Warby,’ Barker recalls. ‘The first time I met Russell, I kipped on his floor in Nottingham with B.A.L.L. and the Walking Seeds, so this scene was opening up and it was suddenly this thing. Nirvana had stayed there the first time on his floor as well. Russell definitely opened some of that up.’
Russell Warby was one of the handful of promoters in the UK whom visiting American bands could call upon to arrange a tour; barely in his twenties, he had started booking concerts in his native Nottingham with mixed results. ‘I’d missed a college course by a year,’ he says. ‘Then by promoting shows I discovered I was a terrible promoter and all I did was lose money by backing horses that I really fancied and nobody else did. Then I got introduced to some Dutch people who handled the Sub Pop bands and I decided to start calling myself an agent.’
The bands that Warby promoted, recording for Sub Pop, K Records and Shimmy Disc along with countless other American labels, were the generation that had formed in the wake of Black Flag, Sonic Youth, Big Black and Butthole Surfers and had drawn inspiration from those bands’ networking and self-reliance. Many of them had been given a leg-up on to the first rung of the touring ladder by opening for Sonic Youth. The next stage of Sonic Youth’s career, which many were assuming would involve them leaving the independent system, was Paul Smith’s major preoccupation. Smith was also trying to establish an American base for Blast First and clarify his position with his flagship band. Consequently few of Sonic Youth’s support acts managed to make an impression on him. ‘I didn’t really have much to do with Russell,’ says Smith. ‘I remember him phoning up to say he was working with this band, Nirvana, and seeing them play somewhere in America with Sonic Youth, and all I can remember is, they wouldn’t get off the couch to do their sound check.’
Warby booked a series of Sub Pop tours into the UK and Europe featuring Mudhoney, Tad and Nirvana in riots of volume and exuberant unprofessionalism, and, in the case of Nirvana, a raucous pop noise. ‘The early shows were so exciting and the band was so fantastic. They really were so much better than anyone else,’ says Warby. ‘Then Nirvana came back to the UK and they did their second John Peel session, which was the covers one, which was tremendous, and you knew – you heard the demos around that time of Nevermind – that something pretty exciting was going on. When they came over on that trip they were completely skint. They’d been taken out to dinner by all
these labels but they had no money.’
One of many bands from the American underground being courted by the majors, Nirvana were still, in their own heads, a band slowly building on their reputation for phenomenal live shows and a melodic sensibility that many of their peers lacked. The band’s contact with the record industry was little more than an informal relationship with their record label and two or three semi-professional friends like Warby who could book them a regular run of shows at home and abroad. ‘I tried to get them a manager here when they were in the UK,’ says Warby, ‘but they wanted to meet the Pixies’ manager, so we set up a meeting with Ken Goes. I rang him up and said, “Well, you’ve had the demos for Nevermind, and you’ve heard the Peel session, what do you think?” and he said to me something along the lines of, “I can’t see what sets this band apart from 100,000 other bands in America.”’
In America the Pixies were released on Elektra, a division of Warners, which was considered by those in the know to be in the running for Sonic Youth. ‘I was talking to the majors,’ says Paul Smith. ‘The band weren’t talking to the majors, I was talking to the majors for them. Around the time of Evol I said, “You will get signed by a major,” and them just laughing hysterically and saying, “Paul, you’re so great, you’re so fucked up, you actually believe that might turn out to be true.”’
Sonic Youth’s last album for Blast First had been Daydream Nation; the release was not without problems. The band’s American label SST had run into further cash-flow difficulties and the band had asked Smith to supervise Daydream’s American release. For Smith, handling Daydream Nation in the States was a crucial first step in building a structure for Blast First America. ‘With Daydream coming out on Blast First in America, we didn’t do an incredible job, but we were doing the job that needed to be done, and we were spending the advertising dollars – $60,000, I seem to remember, nothing crazy, but $60,000 to a penny more than SST would have spent. We were in there with radio stations, we were doing the thing. The day it came out the phone rang in my apartment and it was Ahmet Ertegun and he was, “I’ve always loved the band.”’
Daydream Nation had been part-distributed by Enigma, a company financed by the major MCA. While Sonic Youth had not fully signed to a major, they had left the underground for the halfway house of major-label distribution. Now in a holding pattern, the band realised their next move would almost inevitably involve signing to a major. Their relationship with Smith was one dear to all involved, but it remained a confused one that lacked any formal or legally binding management or record company agreement. As Blast First’s biggest-selling band, Sonic Youth were, after the critical and commercial success of Daydream Nation, in a stronger position than their record label. As Smith fielded calls from moguls like Ehtegun, communication between the band and Smith grew increasingly erratic and strained as both parties began weighing up options.
‘What I had wanted to do was have Blast First become something more of the model of Some Bizzare,’ says Smith, ‘in a way that we could engage with the big machine, and we’d protect the band. Obviously it didn’t work out that way, so there were things like us having dinner with Ahmet.’
Sonic Youth’s diary began to fill with a round of meetings and appointments with the major labels. Once word was out that the band were ready to sign they had no shortage of courtiers. Many of the majors had staff in A&R and media departments who were long-term fans of the band and realised that the value of signing the totemic Sonic Youth went beyond merely releasing the band’s music. If any band could survive the transition from the indie network, with all its unwritten moral codes and behavioural tics, it was Sonic Youth. The band’s measured career approach, its intelligence and, above all, its endless underground connections, if safely housed and ring-fenced by the right company, could act as a shining example of the way forward for their peer group. Any major label that could create a working relationship with America’s hottest underground guitar band would soon earn a coveted reputation.
In entering discussions with major labels, Sonic Youth had to endure the strained and ridiculous power politics of the corporate entertainment industry. The band were welcomed into the glasslined suites of Manhattan to witness boardroom dynamics to their full effect. Smith was still acting as the band’s semi-official representative and attended the meetings, as did, in a sign of the group’s sense of purpose, an entertainment lawyer. ‘CBS Black Tower is across the road from Grubman, Indursky & Schindler,’ says Smith, ‘who were then the second-largest media lawyers in America and Allen Grubman was in the meeting we had with CBS. It was the most ludicrous Spinal Tap meeting I’ve ever been to. The band were absolutely useless and had nothing to say to anybody. The whole fuss around Tommy Mottola … Tommy’s on the third floor … was just ridiculous. He had this black-and-white check jacket on, this mullet haircut, and he came in the room, sat behind the desk and did his little swing around and went, “There’s a button underneath this desk that I could press and make you superstars and I, Tommy Mottola, I’m pressing that button right now.”’
Tommy Mottola was the late Eighties corporate American music executive incarnate, a protégé of Walter Yetnikoff, the man who had overseen the success of Michael Jackson’s Thriller and helped the music industry threaten Hollywood as America’s most rampant and lucrative creative power base. Mottola had made his name by handling the career of Hall & Oates and exploiting such opportunities as producing the world’s first branded tour, a partnership with his charges and Beech Nut chewing gum. He was now attempting to talk turkey with Sonic Youth, a band who had just been on the road with a band called Rapeman. ‘Sonic Youth all sat on a couch, with their faces going, “What?”,’ says Smith. ‘I was sat in a chair looking at Mottola, who said, “Do we have any questions?” The fantastic dumb silence that only musicians can do followed and I said, “Well, for the band, I know it’s really important that they have artistic control.” I said, “I know Bill Nelson, a friend, an artist I respect, and he was on CBS and CBS remixed his album without his permission and put it out and that would be something that wouldn’t work for these guys.” It was like something out of The West Wing. Mottola went, “Er, er, that would have been before my time,” and the CBS executives all passed the buck on responding, and we shuffled out.’
Once the meeting had finished Grubman called his colleague Richard Grabel on his way back to his offices. Grabel, a former New York correspondent for NME turned entertainment lawyer, was starting to take clients based on his in-depth knowledge of independent labels and was set to handle Sonic Youth’s account at Grubman, Indursky & Schindler. According to Smith, at least, it was Sonic Youth’s decision to hire a professional legal team that saw his involvement in their career terminated. ‘Allen Grubman goes to Grabel, “Who the fuck was the English guy who embarrassed my friend in front of me,”’ says Smith. ‘“Get the fuck rid of him,” and within days of that I was gone.’
Sonic Youth declined Mottola’s advances but signed instead to Geffen, one of the smaller majors, in a deal brokered by Grabel which contained the much-coveted clause of ‘full creative control’.
‘Anybody who’s worked with bands will know that a band with no ambition isn’t really that much fucking use to you if you’re a record company,’ says Smith. ‘The ones that have no ambition – it doesn’t matter how fantastic they are, they’ll probably never make it, so you want the ambition and Sonic Youth always represented a level of ambition, and they saw their chance, and they took it.’
On the tour for Goo, Sonic Youth’s first album for Geffen, the band stuck firmly to their roots and hand-picked their support acts. For the UK leg a new band from Glasgow, Teenage Fanclub, was invited to open for Sonic Youth. Teenage Fanclub had just released their debut, A Catholic Education, on Paperhouse.
‘I was talking to Stephen Pastel,’ says Barker, ‘who said, “My mate Norman’s got a new band. They were gonna be called Superdrug, but now they’re called Teenage Fanclub and they’re really great, you k
now,” all this stuff. Stephen, bless him for ever, is really magnanimous. Most people in bands are like, “Oh, no one’s any fuckin’ good but me.” He’s never been like that ever, and he never will be.’
Teenage Fanclub members included Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley, who had been in the Boy Hairdressers and were veterans of Splash One. Blake had played briefly in both the Pastels and the Vaselines. Rather than drawing influence from My Bloody Valentine, like most of their contemporaries, Teenage Fanclub had a loose, melodic sound that wasn’t afraid to rock and, unlike the shoegazers, the band had an easy onstage charm and confidence.
‘I got a tape, then Norman rang to say they were playing a gig,’ says Barker. ‘But when I saw them, I mean, it was just magic. I really saw something. There were fifteen people there. They came onstage. Norman said, “Hello, we’re Teenage Fanclub, and we are Glasgow’s top singers by the way.” They’d spent £2,000 recording the first record and I said, “Well, we’ll give you that back for a fucking kick-off.” And Clive said, “What did you want to say that for?” Because it was a one-off deal, it wasn’t five albums, whatever, but that was his attitude.’
How Soon is Now?: The Madmen and Mavericks who made Independent Music 1975-2005 Page 40
